K&E Excavating, Inc.

K&E Excavating, Inc. is a Salem, Oregon civil contractor founded in 1998 that grew from a small excavation crew into a full-service heavy civil firm. Its work covers underground utilities, highway and bridge construction, paving, concrete, rock crushing and airport construction, and it operates across Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The company employs more than 400 people. In August 2026 K&E completed a sale to an employee stock ownership plan, making every employee an owner. President Kerry Kuenzi framed the transaction as a way to keep the business and its crews intact rather than sell to an outside buyer.

Growth at K&E has come as much through acquisition as through hiring. The company bought Coastal Excavation of Sitka in 2017 and stood up K&E Alaska the same year. It picked up H&H Paving of Salem in 2018 and launched K&E Paving. It acquired High Desert Aggregate and Paving of Terrebonne in 2019 and sold that business in 2025, and it bought Benny Hempstead Excavating of Coos Bay in 2020. A concrete division started in 2013 and K&E Rock Products in 2014.

Facilities

The Salem headquarters at 3871 Langley Street SE has an office building of over 14,000 square feet, remodeled in 2024, and a shop of over 24,000 square feet built in 2023 with dedicated bays for light vehicles, heavy haul trucks and Caterpillar equipment plus a full fabrication bay. The surrounding yard runs to more than 14 acres. The Redmond office and shop, finished in 2025, add over 9,000 square feet on a 17-acre property, staffed with its own leadership, project managers, superintendents, mechanics and office staff.

Central Oregon has been a K&E market for more than a decade, and the Redmond crew works in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and surrounding communities. K&E Alaska operates out of Sitka across southeastern Alaska. K&E Rock Products runs the Davis Creek Rock Quarry.

Beyond earthwork, the published service list includes in-water and wetland construction, demolition, construction survey, transportation and sitework, alongside utility, highway, bridge, paving, concrete and airport work. The first job over $10 million was the I-5 Beltline project in 2011. The company carries Oregon CCB license 128542.

Public agency work features heavily in what K&E puts forward: emergency slide repair on Sardine Creek east of Salem for ODOT in an environmentally sensitive area, the 15th and Murphy roundabout for the City of Bend, a night-shift highway job with a water shutdown for the City of Albany, and the 2019 terminal apron expansion at Redmond Municipal Airport.

Headcount now sits above 350 by the company’s own count. The safety program is framed around attitude rather than a rule list alone, and employees can file safety suggestions through a form published on the company site.